Eyes on the Street

New “People’s 311” Site Maps Street Hazards

Carrie McLaren and Steve Lambert are working on a public service photo project called "People's 311." They want New Yorkers to submit shots of things like potholes, bike lane hazards, dying trees and broken traffic signs.

By Jason Varone

1:27 PM EDT on August 27, 2007

Carrie McLaren and Steve Lambert are working on a public service photo project called “People’s 311.” They want New Yorkers to submit shots of things like potholes, bike lane hazards, dying trees and broken traffic signs.

People’s 311 is a “crowdsourcing” response to the Street Conditions Observation Unit (SCOUT) program, a new team of inspectors dispatched by the Mayor’s Office of Operations to drive every city street (in scooters) once per month and report problem conditions to 311. McLaren and Lambert think this is something citizens could help with. They eventually plan to map all photos for a more comprehensive picture of reported problems.

Check the Stay Free! Magazine Blog for details. And for more experiments in crowdsourcing, see Brian Lehrer’s SUV count from earlier this month, and, of course, Streetsblog’s favorite project, Uncivil Servants.

Jason Varone

Jason Varone battles the streets everyday during a 9 mile commute on his bicycle from downtown Brooklyn to the Upper East Side. In addition to his efforts on Streetsblog, he is an artist making work related to the environment and technology. Examples of his work can be found at www.varonearts.org.